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Bill Suitts, Boulder businessman, serviceman, volunteer, dies at 89

By Joe Rubino Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
10/06/2012 10:17:50 PM MDT

Updated:
10/06/2012 10:28:32 PM MDT

Click photo to enlarge

Bill Suitts, center, gets a special Boulder High Baseball jersey from his daughter, Melody Conway, left, before the naming ceremony for Suitt Field in Scott Carpenter Park in July 2006. At right is his wife, Beth Suitts.

Bill Suitts traveled far and wide in his life, flying in bombers over Europe during World War II and playing on a minor league team for the Chicago Cubs before settling in Boulder in the 1950s, family and friends say.

But he had an impact on the community in more ways than one after he made it his home.

William J. Suitts died Friday in his Boulder home surrounded by family and friends. He was 89.

Suitts was a 2005 inductee into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame. Suitts Field at Scott Carpenter Park is also named for him because of his support for local youth baseball.

A founder of the Colorado Mortgage Co. in 1958, Suitts helped finance the construction of 5,000 single-family homes in Boulder and played a major role in the creation of landmark neighborhoods such as Martin Acres, Keewaydin Meadows and Frasier Meadows, family members say.

He made it a point to give a chance to young builders through his role as a financier, salesman and promoter for residential developments, his daughter Dawn Suitts said.

"He was a loaner and mentor to many of the young builders in Boulder," she said. "He would take a risk on them when a formal institution would not."

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The fifth of 10 children, Suitts was born June 4, 1923, and grew up in and around Galesburg, Ill. His father was unemployed when he was an adolescent, so he and his siblings sometimes would scrape leftover wheat and corn from the bottom of old rail cars as the family's primary food, according to an oral life story Suitts delivered in March.

After crisscrossing the country looking for work after high school, Suitts volunteered to join the armed forces in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. He joined the Merchant Marines in Los Angeles, during which time he played baseball on California's Catalina Island with members of the Chicago Cubs.

Suitts suffered from seasickness and later left the Merchant Marines to join the Air Force, getting his first taste of Colorado while training at Lowry Air Force Base and eventually becoming a nose gunner in B-24 bombers stationed in Europe.

After the war, Suitts returned to Galesburg where he met, fell in love with and married his wife, Beth. Using the G.I Bill, Suitts attended two colleges in Illinois before moving with Beth to Denver, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Denver. DU later honored the couple's charitable contributions by naming its Suitts Career Management Center after them.

In 1995, the couple and their children moved to Boulder, Dawn Suitts said, and after a few years in Martin Acres, the Suittses moved to eastern Boulder, where Bill lived until his death.

Dawn Suitts recalls some of her dad's favorite places included the Village Coffee Shop, Folsom Field, where he would cheer on the University of Colorado football team, and Chautauqua Park, where he would take the family to watch movies outdoors.

She said some of the things that defined her dad were his optimism, his sense of humor and his humility, all things she felt were an outgrowth of his struggles in childhood.

" 'For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game;' that was one of his favorite quotes," Dawn Suitts said, referencing the Grantland Rice poem. "He used to say that to us and his grandkids."

Alan Cass, longtime CU sports announcer and curator of the Glenn Miller Archive at CU, first crossed paths with Suitts in 1999 when they both placed bids on a historic log book that is considered the only known record of big band legend and CU alum Glenn Miller's plane going down over the English Channel in 1944.

Suitts, a lifelong enthusiast of big band music, ended up with the book, which he allowed Cass to copy, Cass said. Suitts and his wife became advisers for the archive and close friends of Cass's over the years, he said.

"He had a really wide smile and just exuded calm and intelligence and thoughtful deliberation in everything he did," Cass said. "He was a true gentleman and had a wonderful sense of humor."

Suitts also served on the board of directors for the American Music Research Center at CU, Cass noted, and other volunteer boards in Boulder.

"I think Bill personified what it was to be an active citizen in the Boulder and CU communities," Cass said. "He was a great guy; he really was."

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